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The Marcia Brown Research Room will be closed on Tuesday, September 18th from 4-7p.m. while a class is in session. Research assistance will be available in room 351 in the Department of Special Collections and Archives during this time.

In September 1931, the Edward E. Potter Club was formed "to keep alive the friendships made in undergraduate days, to promote the interests of State College by interesting men of character in the teaching profession, to maintain a high social standard among the men at State College, to cooperate more fully with the Alumnae Association, to keep our selves educationally alert." The Club promoted high educational and behavioral standards for the young men attending the New York State College for Teachers (as the University at Albany was then known) and encouraged its members as individuals and as a group to participate in service-related activities.

The Department is continuously arranging and describing manuscript and archival collections and adding the finding aids and inventories that are created to the Department’s Website. Some of the finding aids from the Archives of Public Affairs and Policy added in the last month include:

In September 1941, Sayles Hall was opened as a men's dormitory with accomodations for 134 students. The dormitory also contained a billiard room, gymnasium, and dining hall. Sayles Hall had been dedicated and formally named on Alumni Weekend, June 14, 1941. Purchase of the land and the construction of the building was funded by donations to the Alumni Association, which voted to name the building for then Acting President John M. Sayles, in recognition of his many years of service to the Association. John M. Sayles</img> As the long time chairman of the Alumni Association's funding arm, the Dormitory Committee of the Benevolent Association, Sayles, with Anna E. Pierce, is widely credited with successfully guiding the fund-raising campaign that purchased the land comprising Alumni Quadrangle and built the first two dormitories on the site, Pierce and Sayles Halls.

The Dewey Graduate Library is located in Hawley Hall on the Downtown Campus of the University at Albany and has had several names during its incarnation as a library, including the Hawley Library. Gideon Hawley </img> Gideon Hawley (1785-1870), is widely known as the creator of the common or public elementary schools in New York. He served as the first superintendent of the common schools in New York (1812-1821). As a member of the Regents (1842-70), Hawley is credited with helping to establish the New York State Normal School (as the University at Albany was then known). Hawley served as a member of the State Normal School’s first Executive Committee (1844-1852) which helped to win permanent state funding for the new school.

The exhibit Edward Durell Stone and the Building of the Uptown Campus, 1961-1971 is on display near the entrance of the University Library. It includes items drawn from the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives' University Archives and book collections about the Edward Durell Stone designed Uptown Campus of the University at Albany, SUNY. The physical exhibit will be on display in the University Library through December 2006 and an expanded version will be unveiled in January 2007 in the Science Library. For questions regarding the exhibit, contact Geoffrey Williams at 437-3935 or gwilliams@uamail.albany.edu.

Both people who just happen to be passing by and researchers who have used the Department's collections many times often ask "Just who is this M.E. Grenander?" and "What connection does Marcia Brown have to the University at Albany?" Now you know. The Department of Special Collections and Archives holds the collections of both women and information in addition to what is on each of the above webpages is available. You only need to ask.

The Department of Special Collections and Archives' website has undergone a gradual redesign in recent months. A few things you may have noticed: >>Individual pages have been redesigned in an effort to make them easier to navigate by adding menus. >>The finding aids were given a new Department logo graphic. >>The Department's second level pages (everything other than finding aids, exhibits, and the Department's index page) also have a new logo featuring images from our collections. The Department's website will continue to change and we welcome your input and suggestions.

A great new online resource for anyone interested in New York history is The Digital Collections website. According to the website: "The Digital Collections provide a gateway to a variety of rich primary source materials held by the State Archives, State Library, and State Museum. Through the collection, you can access photographs, textual materials, artifacts, government documents, manuscripts, and other materials." The collections available online will be of interest to researchers of environmental, labor, Native American, World War I, and many other subject areas. The collections include Conservation Department Records, Environmental History Collection, Factory Investigating Committee, Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Native American Collection, Harlem Hellfighters Collection, New York Chamber of Commerce Portraits, and New York Lantern Slides Collection.

The exhibit The Secret Lives of Toys and Their Friends is on display in the lobby of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives on the third floor of the Science Library at the University at Albany. A small number of items and information from the exhibit are made available online at http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/secretlives/ as an introduction to the physical exhibit. This exhibit contains items drawn from The Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children’s Literature Collection and is on exhibit through early October 2006. This exhibit features a small sampling of the many stories written for children from either a toy’s point of view or about adventures based on the lives of living toys or objects. The over fifty items in the physical exhibit, including the small number displayed in the online exhibit, are a fraction of what the Mathes Collection contains on the subject of animated objects and/or toys....